Authored by Jan Jekielek and Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Gender ideologies work by confusing people about reality while pushing confused kids into becoming customers of the transitioning industry, according to authors Dr. Jeff Myers and Brandon Showalter.

Transgenderism is “an ideology that came out of the postmodern movement in the 1980s that is attempting to gain power by confusing people about the nature of reality. There’s a medical industry that comes along and says that if children are confused, they’ll use our products, and then, they stand to make tens of billions of dollars. The ideology and the industry fuels a problem and actually makes children double victims,” Myers said in a May 2 interview with Jan Jekielek on “American Thought Leaders.”

Myers and Showalter are authors of the book, “Exposing the Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens From the Transgender Industry’s False Ideology,” published in March by Summit Ministries.

Showalter criticizes social media and influencers for trying to convince young people—many of whom are on the autism spectrum and suffer from mental health issues—to believe that they were born in the wrong body.

“It is physiologically impossible to become the opposite sex. We’ve seen this happen with previous social contagions, like anorexia, cutting, and other modes of self-harm that spread by social contagion. The same thing is happening with this situation,” he said in the interview. “What happens with autistic people, however severe or moderate or mild their autism, […] is they become enmeshed in a culture where their issues can be explained away by way of gender identity ideology.”

Myers points out that they have looked into supposed studies that claim that children who don’t get transgender procedures will commit suicide. He calls such studies “dead wrong” and the media interpretation of these studies a “lie.”

“When you look back at them, you realize, at very best, those studies show that people who go through these medical procedures see no improvement,” he said. “In my experience, young people who experience gender dysphoria, and I work with several thousand young people every year, always have comorbidities such as anxiety, depression, and unresolved childhood trauma. It’s all of these things all mixed together.”

According to Showalter, the reason why institutions are pushing gender agenda onto kids has to do with “institutional capture.”

Professional societies like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, and other therapy organizations are “completely buying in with brutal speed” the idea that the approach to treat gender disorder is to “only affirm whatever the child or the young person says that they are.”

“You are to immediately and unquestionably say that is correct and never, ever challenge it,” Showalter stated.

In March last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs released a document titled, “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People.” It endorsed that minors be subjected to hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery.

On the same day, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network also released a document promoting surgical procedures on minors.

Standards of Care, Legal Issues

Myers notes that the standards of care regarding transgender medicine have been developed by the World Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

“They specifically state that there is a highly choreographed way to handle transgender medicine. This is the only way, and it is recommended by the WPATH. It is that you start with social transition and refer to someone by their new chosen name and change pronouns, then alert their teachers and their parents that they must use these new pronouns.”

“Then, to the level of comfort of the patient, you move toward puberty blockers, you move toward cross-sex hormones, and you move toward surgery. This is not a radical step. It’s the natural choreographed path outlined by the standards of care that doctors are given.”

Showalter pointed out that the vast majority of doctors do not support such treatments. However, they “keep their heads down” if they are working for large, corporatized institutions saying that “this is the dogma that rules the day.”

According to Myers, one of the reasons why doctors do not speak up about the issue is due to a legal groundwork being developed right now.

“If you don’t follow the standards of care, which are ordinarily taken by doctors as recommendations … then you might open yourself up to a lawsuit by someone who didn’t want to go through puberty as a male or a female,” he said. “Now, your refusal to treat them is medical neglect. A lot of doctors, just for malpractice reasons, are following the standards of care, or recommending the standards of care, even though they don’t personally buy into them.”

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